The company has done the tough work, taken the difficult decisions.

ALEC HOGG: As you heard from David Shapiro earlier today we had the financial results for the six months to the end of June from Anglo Platinum. I had quite a lengthy chat with the chief executive, Neville Nicolau. We start this highlights package with his response to my query about the group's expansion programme.

NEVILLE NICOLAU: We have a long-term profile for our business, and what we really need to do is make sure we have a long-term capital profile that is appropriate for the long-term mining profile. It doesn't help to build mines and process and plant and so on way before it's necessary. So what we have done, we have broken down the silos within our business, and we make sure that we align our capital spend directly to our business need or our mining need. And, as we adjust that, as we did from last year to this year, we actually increased the profile going forward slightly. Then we do need to increase of capital spend. But what the shareholder can be certain of is that we will spend capital at the right time, just in time, to make sure that our profile is protected.

ALEC HOGG: Two other bits of good news coming out of the numbers, apart from the fact that you did turn around strongly, was the safety issue. Even though it's improved again by 16%, you still had five deaths. You are going for that "one death is too many", but how realistic is that in the kind of mining that you are doing?

NEVILLE NICOLAU: Well, when we get down to one death per year maybe we'll have that debate. In the meantime we are working towards zero. Our fatalities, if we look at the numbers year-on-year - and I really don't like talking about fatalities in this way, because they are people and human beings and families and so on, so it's very important to keep the human element in our safety programme - but  if you compare our year-to-date progress with last year, then we actually had a 50% improvement in the number of people dying. That's still too many. But what we have done along the way is demonstrated on many of our operations, and collectively, that we can go long periods of time without fatalities. And if you can go long periods of time without fatalities, then why can't you go forever without fatalities? So it's work in progress. We have made good progress in what we've done. We are still not proud of the fact that people die in our business, and we still believe that zero is possible.

ALEC HOGG: The problems that Aquarius has recently had with the size of the stopes and the working areas that the mining officer was imposing on them - we didn't hear any concerns from Anglo Platinum. Is that because it doesn't affect you that way?

NEVILLE NICOLAU: Well, it does. We all mine the board-and-pillar method which is used there. It is something that all of the major - and junior - producers use in the business. What we've done, the same as what happened last year with the Impala disasters, we've tried to learn from them and there's a lot of sharing that goes on in the industry in this regard. We've tried to learn from them what the mechanisms of the collapse were, and what the circumstances were, and then we compare that to what we do and we look at ways of actually getting out of the position. There is government involvement and we do participate bipartite and tripartite where this specific matter is being discussed. But we just want to make sure that we learn from the incident and that we actually put something in place that will prevent these types of deaths from occurring in our operations. And when we have something to say more positively in that regard, I'm sure we'll say it.

ALEC HOGG: The other bit of good news is the mining rights. Only last Wednesday you received your letters of conversion from the Department of Mineral Resources. I'm sure that was a big sigh of relief. But when you have a look at the work you have done on this front in the past couple of years, launching BEE companies indeed in Mvela Resources and Anooraq, and then helping Wesizwe with the Western Bushveld joint venture - is that it now, as far as disposing of rights is concerned?

NEVILLE NICOLAU: Well, we had our rights issue in the first quarter and we received our rights in the second quarter so we think that two rights make a half.

ALEC HOGG: [Laughs] Have you used that before? That's a good one, Neville.

NEVILLE NICOLAU: Look, they have been significant transactions, but if you are aiming for 26% of a company the size of Anglo Platinum the only way to do that is with big chunks of deals. So I don't think that the magnitude of what we've done should be underestimated. It is what it is, because we are working to get to a percentage. We've done that now. We continue to participate in those joint ventures and we will continue to try to make our partners as strong as possible.
***

ALEC HOGG: How do you like that one, Dave? Two rights make a half.

DAVID SHAPIRO: Ja!

ALEC HOGG: Nice to see that Neville's got a sense of humour, despite the ... that we gave Anglo Platinum recently on its appointment of Anglo American's chief executive as the chair of the board. But they do seem to be getting things right. In the old days Anglo Platinum seemed to just spend, and it had R36bn projects which has already been approved by the board. But now the board is saying, hang on a minute, we are not going to spend that R36bn until we see the platinum price going up, which is good.

DAVID SHAPIRO: Ja. I think there are a number of things - the price of platinum, the rand, they've also got their production targets. I think they've got to satisfy the board that they can actually produce - and of course costs. But it looks better. I must say that taking a two-year projection it looks a lot better than it did last year.

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